THE MUD BATH

Hokitika Guardian, 16 March 1917, Page 4

THE MUD BATH

Australians on Somme. Work of Comforts Furd. (From Cap'aio 0, E. W. fLau, Aus-trM-a i Pro?N with the Common wia-Ah Ft roes. Copyright by Grown.) British Headquarters, France, Dec 20 A friend has shown the a letter from Malboar.e. Its writer ba-i asked a man—an educated man—if he would give a subscription for the Australian Comforts Fund. “ Certainly not,” was the reply, “ the men have every comfort in the trenches,” This is the sort of dense-skinned ignorance which makes one insufferably aDgry —the ignorance which, because it has heard of or read a letter from some brave-hearted youngster making light of hardships for his mother’s sake, therefore dies to the conclusion that everything written and spoken about the horrors of this war is humbug, and what the army calls “eyewash,” a big conspiracy to deceive the people who are not there. As a matter of fact the early winter of 1916 through which these men have just been going will have a chapter to itself in history so long as history lasts. It is to some extent past history now—to what extent I do not suppose anyone on the German side or ours exactly knows. I personally do not know how the men and their officers can live through that sort of time. Remember that a fair proportion of them were a few months ago addiog np figures in the office of an insurance company or a shipping firm—taking their midday coffee and roll in a tea shop in King or Collins Street. Bat take even a central district farmer or a Newcastle miner—yes, cr a Scottish shepherd, or an English poacher—take the hard* est man you kuow ; take him out of doors iato the thick of a dirty European winter; march him 12 miles through a bitter cold wind and driving rain—on his back all the clothing, household furniture, ntensils, and even the only cover whioh he is allowed to take with him ; dribble him in through mud up to bis knees—sometimes up to his waist—along miles and miles of country that is nothingbut broken tree stamps and endless shell-holes—holes in which, if a man were to fall, he might lie for days before he was found, or might never be found at all, trickle him, half dead with dragging hia feet at every step out of the putty-like mud, into a shallow, straggling open ditch not in any way different from a watery paddock, except that there is no grass about it, nothing but brown, slippery mud ou the floor and trench sides and over the country in all directions, as far as eye can see. At the end of it all put him to live there, with what baggage he carried on his back and nothing more; put him in various depths of mud to stay there all day in raiD, wind, fog, hail, snowstorm —whatever weather comes—and to watch there during the endless winter nights, when the longed-for dawn only means another day and another night, put there in the mud ditch without a shred of cover whatsoeverThe longed-for relief comes at last—a change to other shell-shattered areas in support or reserve —and the battalion comes back down the long road to the rear, dragging foot after foot slowly through the mad, for they had been through a life which you, or any people paßt and present who have not been to this war, have not the first beginnings of a conception ; something beside which a South Polar expedition is a dance and a pienio. And that is without taking into account the additional fact that night and day, on the Somme, where these conditions existed, men lived under the unceasing sound of guns. 1 can hear them as 1 write —it is their first longed for, gloriously bright day, and therefore there is not an interval of a second in that continuous roar, hour after hour. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. There has never been anything to approach it except at Verdun. Life is hard enough in winter in the old established trenches along the more settled parts of the front, There is plenty for the comforts fund to do there, Dropping into the best of quiet front trenches straight from his home life the ordinary man would oonsider himself as undergoing hardships undreamt of. Visiting those trenches straight from the Somme the other day, with their duckboard and sandbags, and the occasional ping of a sniper’s bullet, and the spasm of field gun and trenoh mortar fire which appeared in the official Summary next day as “ artillery and trench mortar activity,” after the Somme, 1 say, one found oneself looking on it, in the term of the friend who went with me, as “ war de ; luxe.” It is unwise to take what one man ( writes of one place as true of all place?, indeed, of anything except . what he personally sees and knows at i the moment. There, conditions whioh 1 I have described are what I have J seen, and are, fortunately, past hie- . tory, or I should not be describing j them. 1 know personally that Eng- i lish ,troops, Scottish troops and Aus- ■ tralian troops went through them, 1 and have in eom9 cases issued from j some trenches and taken similar Ger. ; man trenches in front of them. Our I troops are more comfortable than i

they ware, but it is in tho nature of war to find yourself plunged into extremes of exertion and hardship without warning, and no man knows when he writes to-day—and I doubt whether any one of his superiors c iuld tell him —whether he will atacysiven date be ia a w ires condition or a better one. What the German is going through on his side of the muddy landscape 1 will describe in the next article. For [ our grand men—and though to be k called a hero is the last tbmg most | Australians desire, the men are never i grander that of these times —the Aus- , tralians’ Comforts Fund, the Y.M.C, A. . and the canteen groceries provide almost all the comfort that ever eaters . that grim regioD. In the areas to , whioh those tired men come for a spell , the comforts funds are beginning to , give them theatres for concart troupes t and cinemas. i Bat for those who are actually in the front or just behind it one cup of i warm coffee in a jtm tin from a road- . side stall hai been, in certain times . and places, ell that can be given ; the j fund has given that, and it has been th 9 landmark in ths day for many. men. . In those conditions there was but ocj sasional solace. A friend of mine found , one of his men in these days standing r in mud nearly up to his waist, shiver- . ing in his arms and every body muscle, , leaning back against the trench side—- « fast asleep.